Highcliff hope: Michael Mangos outside his healing rooms house on the Otago Peninsula

But a GP spokesman warns ditching conventional medicine for a dose of spirituality could be dangerous.

Faith healer Michael Mangos says swapping pills for prayer can lead to “miracle impacts” at his Highcliff healing rooms on the Peninsula. He says on average, one person a week turns up claiming doctors can’t help them.

His take on health is all the more remarkable because his wife Hilda is a haematologist at Dunedin Hospital.

Quiet and obliging, Mangos explains how the good Lord last year led his family from Australia to Otago so he could begin the ministry.

He says people accept germs and genetics as the causes of sickness because they don’t see the evil forces that do the dirty work.

“If they don’t see it under a microscope they don’t believe it exists. It’s not discernable to the human eye.”

A member of the International Association of Healing Rooms, he’s pulled together three-strong prayer teams to expel malevolent spirits from those seeking help.

Mangos points to a pregnant woman, prone to miscarriage, who he says went full term thanks to the power of prayer.

Mangos says divine guidance led him to the problem – one of the woman’s legs was longer than the other.

“We could see it (the short leg) moving out as we prayed. And she yelled, `I can feel it moving out of my body!’”

There are four designated prayer rooms at the Mangos residence – converted from a home-stay business. Each room is serene and frugally, though tastefully, furnished.

A book of testimonies sitting on a lace-draped table tells stories of restored health, including a woman who overcame a five-week bout of diarrhoea.

“Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her,” Mangos says. “She was losing weight. She was desperate.”

Otago Southland Royal College of General Practitioners Faculty Board member Dr John Mills, of Dunedin, agrees faith can be a comfort and a healer but he also issues a warning.

“It’s potentially dangerous. I think they need to liaise with the customer’s medical practitioner. That would make things safer.

“Some things may be straightforward but if things are complicated there is the potential to make things worse.”

Mangos’s take on causes is ‘totally untrue”, he says. When you have an infection it’s obvious what’s caused the problem, Mills says. And chronic illness can strike whether you are religious or not, he adds.

Mangos plans a second healing room in Musselburgh for those who find Highcliff inaccessible.